Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Skrillex Music is Said to Protect Against Mosquito Bites

Universiti Malaysia Sarawak researchers discovered that mosquitoes sucked less blood and had less sex when exposed to the Skrillex song "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites".

For the experiment, scientists created two environments in which to study the feeding and mating behaviors of Aedes aegypti (right), the mosquito that spreads dengue fever, chikungunya, Zika fever, Mayaro, and other nasty diseases: one that was silent, and one that had the EDM track blasting out of a nearby speaker.

In each case, a swarm of hungry female mosquitoes who’d gone 12 hours without a meal were put into a cage with a restrained hamster.

In the silent, “music-off” environment, the ravenous mosquitoes descended upon the hamster after an average of 30 seconds.

Researchers observed, however, that mosquitoes in the “music-on” environment – where Skrillex was playing – demonstrated “delayed response time and reduced visitation to [the hamster]”.

They also found that “blood feeding activity had low occurrence when music was played” and that “adults entertained with music copulated far less than their counterparts kept in the environment where there was no music entertainment”.

Their scientific paper was published last week in the journal Acta Tropica.

I’m not sure if you can remember that Skrillex’s 2010 breakout single that had gone on to earn the now-famous electronic producer three Grammy Awards and ushered in a somewhat obnoxious but rather brief era of mainstream dubstep.

To be sure, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea – but I still wish to share the electronic song anyway: